1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for retaining cooling pipes employed in an ice skating rink or the like which, and is disposed on the floor portion of the rink.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When an ice skating rink is artificially formed by making use of previously existing facilities such as a swimming pool, a stadium, the top of a building or the like, a multiplicity of cooling pipes are positioned on a floor of the rink, instead of having them embedded in the floor of the rink made of concrete materials or the like, so that they may be readily installed and removed at low cost. A refrigerant carrier such as brine flows through the cooling pipes. The rink is equipped with headers employed for both feed-out and feed-back, either on both sides or on one side thereof. The end portions of the cooling pipes are connected to each of the headers. These headers are further connected to a refrigerator or the like out of which the refrigerant carrier is fed. Circulation of the refrigerant carrier proceeds as follows; header for feed-out.fwdarw.cooling pipe.fwdarw.header for feed-back.fwdarw.refrigerator. The thus circulated refrigerant carrier freezes the water within the rink by thermal absorption.
Since however, the rink covers a considerably large area, a multiplicity of cooling pipes need to be arranged so as to extend over the rink at spacings as regular as possible. With this arrangement, it is feasible to freeze a large rink as well as to maintain a uniform quality of ice. Moreover, it is necessary to prevent positional deviation of the cooling pipes or any undesirable movement thereof which are caused by such factors as fluctuations of temperature at the time of freezing and the action of flowing water. For this reason, a plurality of cooling pipes are usually disposed in parallel with respect to each other at an equal distance, said cooling pipes being fixed on the floor portion of the rink. One known method involves an arrangement wherein retaining rods of wood or the like are disposed on the floor portion of the rink at predetermined intervals orthogonal to a multiplicity of cooling pipes, which are mounted on the retaining rods. The cooling pipes and the retaining rods are secured at junctions between them by fasteners such as metallic wire, string or a band.
Where this conventional method is employed, however, the above-mentioned fastening operation must be effected manually; hence, it requires much labour. Also, this kind of manual work creates other problems: It is difficult to adequately freeze the fastening portions, this being attributed to the fact that the wire, string, bands or the like employed for fastening hinder the fastening portions from being frozen; and the position of the fastening portions deviates due to the hydraulic pressure generated by the water flowing within the rink which causes variations in the space between cooling pipes, thus making it impossible to obtain ice of uniform quality over the entire frozen area of the rink. Furthermore, the cooling pipes are exposed, that is the cooling pipes are disposed such as not to be embedded in the floor portion of the rink but to be exposed on the surface thereof, the water tends to slosh back and forth or move along the disposed cooling pipes within the space of a large rink at the stage where the base-ice is formed, thereby leading to such a defect that the freezing speed decreases and the efficiency of the refrigeration process is lowered. If cooling pipes are installed by the conventional fastening method, there is no choice but to employ a relatively thick retaining rod. The use of a thick retaining rod, however, has the disadvantage that cracks are generated in the ice. Another known method for holding the cooling pipes involves an arrangement in which cooling pipes are positioned at predetermined intervals by means of thin spacers with flat shape, which are secured by nails or the like into the floor portion of the rink. However, when using such thin spacers with the cooling pipes exposed and not embedded in the floor portion of the rink, it occurs, at the stage of forming the base-ice, that the water accommodated in a broad area of the rink at a higher water level than the heights of the cooling pipes tends to slosh back and forth, or move along the disposed cooling pipes. The freezing rate thus is reduced and the efficiency of the refrigeration process is lowered. Furthermore, the cooling pipes in such method are substantially attached to the floor portion of the rink, and therefore ice cannot be formed between the pipes and the floor. This unfavorably reduces the strength of the ice to be formed, making it vulnerable to separation or cracking. Generally, both ends of the cooling pipes pass through a fence provided around the circumference of the rink and are connected to headers for feed-out and feed-back, these headers being provided on the outside of the fence. Such being the case, it often occurs that a gap is formed between the cooling pipe and the through-hole in the fence, and as a result, water leaks out through this gap.